


How To Win Minions and Influence People

by Amiril



Series: Amiril Fic (Not Cover Art) [9]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Gen, Pureblood Politics, Trans Avery Sr., Trans Character, discussion of patricide, magic gender change potions, strategic trans ally Tom Riddle
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-20
Updated: 2020-08-20
Packaged: 2021-03-06 19:00:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26013778
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Amiril/pseuds/Amiril
Summary: “So how do you know?”“I just do.” Avery shrugs. “It’s like…”He doesn’t finish the sentence, and the conversation feels awkward. It occurs to Riddle that this might make Avery walk away, along with all future alliances.“Like if you know that you’re born to rule the world, but everyone looks at you and just sees a sixteen-year-old orphan?” he tries.Avery gives Riddle a strange look. “No, not at all like that, because youarea sixteen-year-old orphan and that’s not going to stop you from ruling the world someday. This—” he gestures at himself. “This isn’t something that’s going to just change through hard work.”(Expelli-gender 2020)
Relationships: Avery Sr. & Tom Riddle | Voldemort
Series: Amiril Fic (Not Cover Art) [9]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/827448
Comments: 5
Kudos: 62
Collections: Expelli-gender! 2020





	How To Win Minions and Influence People

**Author's Note:**

  * For [limeta](https://archiveofourown.org/users/limeta/gifts).



> Written for the prompt: "To ensure Avery's (trans) loyalty, Tom brews him potions that help the young pureblood look more like himself. It's not fun to be in a body that doesn't look how you want it to. Then after Avery blabs about Tom's capabilities more people start coming to him for potions and now he has a backdoor business and he's become a Trans ally??? This is not at all how he's expected his NEWTs year to go."
> 
> Warnings for brief discussion of transphobic parents and the suggestion of violence towards transphobic parents. Also warnings for Tom Riddle's entire life story: I've stuck to the canon timeline, so he's already killed his father and grandparents at this point.

It’s seventh year: N.E.W.Ts are coming, Riddle has an empire to build, there’s a transfiguration essay due tomorrow, and… Avery is standing in front of him and fidgeting. Fingers tugging at robe sleeves, toes tapping on the floor. If Riddle is silent for long enough, he thinks the odds are good that nail biting might begin.

But Avery isn’t a bad one. Comes from a good family. Good connections. Useful ally. So:

“A favor,” Riddle repeats.

“Everyone knows you’re the best at potions.” Everyone _does_ know this, and this is pleasing. “This one… has some nasty side effects, if not done right. I was wondering if you could make it for me. I can pay you.”

Glancing around the otherwise empty potions dungeon, Riddle takes the paper. It’s all well and good for people to believe that he’s up to something, but he doesn’t want them to think he’s up to something for _Avery._ Or even _with_ Avery, for that matter.

He looks over the recipe. “You… want to turn into a man.”

“Just for a few hours.” 

The House Cup might be a conspiracy to keep students complacent by competing with each other for little reward, but Riddle can respect a conspiracy done well. Not to mention, it affects teacher perception, and Riddle wants as many professors on his good side as possible. “You realize that if you get caught sneaking into the boy’s dorm, they’ll take away hundreds of points?”

Avery has the guts to look offended. “I don’t want to _sneak into the boy’s dorm.”_

Perhaps it’s a sex thing. If it is, Riddle should learn as much as possible in order to get the most possible leverage. But perhaps, if he establishes himself as trustworthy, that will open the door for larger secrets—and possibly an alliance—down the line. “I’ll make it,” he decides. “You provide the supplies.”

“Alright.” But they’re both Slytherins, and this is a business transaction. “How much?”

“I don’t need your money.” That’s a a lie: Riddle doesn’t have very much money, and even if he did, more would never go amiss. But he certainly doesn’t want anyone _else_ knowing that. The Gaunts had almost nothing, and he’ll have to find another revenue source when it comes time to make a second horcrux, but he isn’t there yet. “Instead, I may call upon you to ask for something in the future.”

Avery gives him a weird look. “Yeah, mate, I know how a favor works.”

“Excellent.” Riddle turns back to his draught of living death. “Leave me.”

Avery shrugs, and does so. 

* * *

“I trust your… experience… was satisfactory?” 

“It was,” Avery says. “Thanks.” A pause. “If I ever wanted more…”

A dependence. That could be a good sign. “You know where to find me,” Riddle says, with the type of smile that gets Slughorn to tell him gossip from the teachers’ lounge. 

* * *

“Riddle, right?”

The Hufflepuff talking to him can’t be more than a fourth-year. Riddle frowns. “Yes?”

“I’m Smythe. Uh, J. Smythe. Avery said you had a potion…?”

* * *

By the third request, he starts charging.

Future favors are well and good, but horcruxes aren’t free.

* * *

“Do you like your name?” Avery has taken to sitting in one of the desks in the dungeon, watching Riddle work. It’s convenient in that Riddle can claim that they’re doing some tutoring, and Slughorn will nod and laugh and say what a good role model he is. Sometimes he winks, as if Riddle and Avery are getting up to anything _illicit._ It’s a _less_ convenient arrangement in that Avery keeps trying to talk to him. 

“What’s wrong with my name?” Riddle tries not to sound defensive. There’s no reason to be defensive about your name unless there’s something wrong with it, and no one can ever believe there’s something wrong.

“Nothing at all. I just… don’t like mine very much, and I was just thinking. If you could change it, what would you change it to?”

“Voldemort.”

“Oh.” Avery nods. “That’s… that’s neat.”

Riddle carefully dices some slugs. “What’s wrong with your name?” Avery is a pureblood. That name can unlock doors with a word that Riddle will spend _years_ working on.

“It’s just a feminized version of my father’s.” 

Ah. The _first_ name. Riddle wouldn't say he can _relate_ to that, either, but he does have some shared life experience. “Do you not like your father?”

“Does anyone _like_ their father?” 

Riddle had certainly never considered liking his. He’d seen only seen the man when he was in bed, sniveling and begging for his life. As though he deserved it. As though he’d never had a child he abandoned, never left Riddle with the double shame of both a muggle father and a missing one. 

“I suppose not.” Maybe Hufflepuffs do. But most parental affection in Slytherin house, as far as Riddle can observe, goes towards the mother: she is the one who will fight for you. Unless you’re the second child, or ill-favored, in which case she’s a heinous bitch.

Parental relationships are not one that Riddle has spent much time thinking about, nor is he interested enough to bother. There is no chance they will ever become relevant.

* * *

“Hey, Riddle,” says a Ravenclaw. “I hear you have a—”

“Two galleons,” Riddle says.

The Ravenclaw looks furtively around the library, as though a crime is being committed. “How much for the recipe?”

Ah. Well. _Technically_ it’s Avery’s recipe, that Riddle is using. If he gives it up now, this Ravenclaw could set up their own enterprise. But when Avery had given it to him, he’d never made it exclusive, and anyway, there’s still the supply chain to consider.

“Six galleons,” he says.

* * *

“What do you get out of this?” he asks Smythe, handing over part of the latest batch. Smythe looks at Riddle, eyes wide, and then scampers away.

Whatever.

But he’s spending an increasing amount of time on this, and he’s started to want answers: his earlier theories wouldn’t require this much repetition, surely.

“Well, it’s like this,” Avery says nervously, apparently unable to talk the one time Riddle requests it. There’s silence in the dungeon for at least a full minute, punctuated by the sound of the cracking of snail shells.

“Yeees?”

“I think I’m actually a bloke.”

“You think you were transfigured?” That makes sense. Not as much sense as if it were the other way around—he assumes most families want a their first-born to be a son—but perhaps, if the baby was illegitimate, or somehow deformed, a daughter would be more convenient for inheritance purposes.

“No, I—” Avery stops. “Well. I don’t _think_ so. My parents are fucked up, but I don’t think they’re _that_ fucked up. Because I’ve met other people like me, and their families don’t seem the type.”

Oh. “So how do you know?”

“I just _do.”_ Avery shrugs. “It’s like…”

He doesn’t finish the sentence, and the conversation feels awkward. It occurs to Riddle that this might make Avery walk away, along with all future alliances.

“Like if you know that you’re born to rule the world, but everyone looks at you and just sees a sixteen-year-old orphan?” he tries.

Avery gives Riddle a strange look. “No, not at all like that, because you _are_ a sixteen-year-old orphan and that’s not going to stop you from ruling the world someday. This—” he gestures at himself. “This isn’t something that’s going to just change through hard work.”

“It could.” Riddle hasn’t done a lot of research, because he still has horcruxes to make and N.E.W.Ts to pass, but so far he’s found nothing that magic cannot do. “The potion effects are temporary, but I’m sure there is a more permanent solution.”

“Only to get hunted down by my parents? No thank you. I’d be disinherited, at the very least. Quite possibly disowned. They’d probably leave everything to my shitweasel of a cousin, and where would I be?”

“You’d have to get a job,” Riddle says dryly, and Avery shudders. “Or…” this is some pretty significant blackmail material he has, so it’s not as though Avery can challenge him. And if he wants the Avery family’s loyalty in the future—“You could kill your parents, inherit, and _then_ do whatever you want.”

“Ha. If only.” Avery starts to grin, but stops when Riddle just continues to work. “You’re joking?”

Riddle shrugs. “If you like.” He does not say: _I have already murdered my own father._ He does not say: _It’s pretty easy to live with._ He _certainly_ does not say: _but it might feel different if my soul was intact._

Avery’s face shifts from horror to a sudden contemplation. “Creon—the shitweasel— is supposed to inherit the family estate, since there is an arrangement for me to marry a Lestrange. I cannot inherit if I break off the marriage pact, but I certainly can’t marry Gaidic as a man. If the _Lestranges_ dissolved the arrangement, I’d be free to do as I chose, and since I’m older than Creon… of course, succession would be a problem— I’d have to find out if the solution allowed me to father children. If I couldn’t, I suppose I could appease Creon by promising that _his_ children could inherit… I’d have to get some slight word changes into my parents’ will, and they’d have to be convinced having me as a son is advantageous… or die conveniently before I went through with a permanent change.” he shakes his head. “Wait, what am I talking about? I can’t just kill my father. I’d be thrown into Azkaban.”

“Only if you got caught,” Riddle says, and then laughs so that Avery will laugh too.

“You’re alright,” he says, and smiles. “Voldemort.”

* * *

A year later to the day, the skeleton hand rattles to announce Avery’s entry into Borgin and Burkes. Voldemort immediately starts fussing with papers in order to make it seem like his job doesn’t involve staring listlessly at the walls and practicing the brush off he’ll give the _Daily Prophet,_ once he’s important enough for them to want to talk to him.

Avery’s looking pretty good these days. Not that Voldemort will ever tell him that. He’s leading his family at the tender age of eighteen, and if there are rumors that his parents’ sudden feebleness was caused by some Latin words said during an explosive argument, well—Voldemort will never repeat them. It's just as likely they were struck with joy realizing they'd had the son they'd always wanted, and wanted to make sure he could stand on his own.

“Hiya, Riddle,” Avery says brightly. “Still got that Hand of Glory?”

“Of course.” Voldemort has had it wrapped under the counter for three days, and takes it out now. “And the orders?”

“Of course,” Avery echoes, tugging on his attempts at chin hairs. He’d been repeatedly assured that many a teenage boy was unable to grow a full beard, but Voldemort had caught him eyeing some hair-grow potions when they were in Diagon Alley the other day.

Not that he makes a _habit_ of being in Diagon Alley, especially being in Diagon Alley with Avery. Sometimes they just happen to be there at the same time, and happen to eat lunch in the same place, and sometimes they happen to talk while they do so. It means nothing, because Voldemort does not have friends.

Avery drops a roll of parchment on the counter, and Voldemort unrolls it carefully. Three names this time—a record. Perhaps he’d found a new bar. _C. Perrot, M. McGonagall, L. Lovegood._

“This is great.” Avery has picked up the Hand of Glory, and is tossing it from hand to hand. “Those vaults won’t know what lit ‘em.” He pauses, waiting for Voldemort to snort. Which he does, because of the social contract, and not because he likes puns.

“Let me know if you find anything interesting,” he says, watching Avery turn towards the door. “I’ll be… here.”


End file.
